5.  The applicant, who is of Serbian origin, was born in 1952 and lives in Pforzheim (Germany).
6.  On 2 January 2002, at around 8.35 p.m., the applicant, on her way to Germany, was crossing the border between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia at Slavonski Brod. She was stopped by the Croatian customs officers, who first searched her car and found undeclared goods hidden in its luggage compartment. In particular, in the place for the spare wheel the officers found 61 cartons of cigarettes of various brands and 9.5 kg of coffee.
7.  The customs officers then searched the applicant and found 30,500 German marks (DEM), which she had also failed to declare under section 74a(1) of the Foreign Currency Act and section 9(2) of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (see paragraphs 14 and 15 below). They seized DEM 20,000 while allowing the applicant to keep the remaining DEM 10,500 as that amount roughly corresponded to 40,000 Croatian kunas (HRK), the sum she was not required to declare pursuant to the above-mentioned legislation. The report drafted on the spot indicates that the applicant informed the customs officers that she had obtained the money through a bank loan in Germany and had been carrying it back there.
8.  On 3 January 2002 the Slavonski Brod Municipal State Attorney’s Office indicted the applicant before the Slavonski Brod Municipal Court for the criminal offence of avoiding customs controls, prescribed in section 298(3) of the Criminal Code, accusing her of not having declared 61 cartons of cigarettes. On 4 January 2002 the court found the applicant guilty as charged and sentenced her to six months’ imprisonment but suspended the sentence (uvjetna osuda) for a period of two years provided that in that period she did not commit a further offence. The court also ordered the confiscation (oduzimanje predmeta) of 61 cartons of cigarettes as a security measure (sigurnosna mjera). As the applicant waived her right to appeal, the judgment immediately became final.
9.  On 3 January 2002 the customs authorities instituted administrative offences proceedings (prekršajni postupak) against the applicant before the Foreign Currency Inspectorate of the Ministry of Finance (Ministarstvo financija, Devizni inspektorat – “the Ministry”).
10.  On 21 March 2002 the Ministry found the applicant guilty of having committed an administrative offence and fined her HRK 6,000. At the same time, the Ministry imposed a protective measure (zaštitna mjera) confiscating DEM 20,000 pursuant to section 99a(2) of the Foreign Currency Act. In so deciding it held as follows:
“In her written defence the accused admitted that she had not declared the money when entering the Republic of Croatia because she had not known that she was required to do so. She submitted that she had taken out a loan from her bank in Germany and that she had been bringing the money to Yugoslavia in order to buy a flat. Since she had not found the flat to her liking she had decided to wait for a while until she found something [more] favourable. ...
... She submitted that she had not been aware that she had to declare the money at the customs. She is asking that the seized money be returned to her because she needs it for the purchase of a flat, and if she does not buy a flat she has to return the money to the bank.
...
[The Ministry] could not accept the defence of the accused that she had not known that she had to declare foreign currency to the customs authorities, considering that this argument could not constitute a ground for exonerating her from ... liability. ...
 In the determination of the amount of the fine, the personal situation of the accused was taken into account, namely the fact that she is divorced and a mother of two children, as well as her financial situation, namely that she is earning EUR 1,200 per month and owns a construction lot. [The Ministry] considered as a mitigating circumstance the fact that the accused had confessed.
The decision to impose the protective measure of confiscating the object of the offence in the amount of DEM 20,000 was rendered on the basis of section 99a of the Foreign Currency Act, which provides that objects of an offence are to be confiscated in favour of the State Budget of the Republic of Croatia. Having assessed the motives of the offence and the circumstances in which it had been committed, [the Ministry] found no particularly justified reasons for not imposing the protective measure, or for imposing the protective measure of partial confiscation of the objects of the offence, because the confession of the accused was the only mitigating circumstance in this case, which in itself (without any other particularly mitigating circumstances) is not sufficient for a decision to return the temporarily seized money, as the object of the offence.”
11.  The Ministry’s decision was served on the applicant on 24 May 2002, after which she appealed against it. Together with the appeal she submitted a letter from her bank in Germany, dated 27 May 2002, confirming that according to the loan agreement of 21 November 2001, she had received a loan of DEM 38,334.27 for the purposes of buying a flat in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
12.  On 19 June 2002 the High Court for Administrative Offences (Visoki prekršajni sud Republike Hrvatske) dismissed the applicant’s appeal and upheld the Ministry’s decision, endorsing the reasons given therein. The decision was served on the applicant on 2 September 2002.
13.  The applicant then lodged a constitutional complaint, alleging, inter alia, a violation of her constitutionally protected right of property. On 21 May 2003 the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske) dismissed her complaint, finding no violation of any of the constitutional rights relied on, and served its decision on the applicant on 9 June 2003.